Today many routine X-ray procedures involve the recording of a rapid sequence of images showing the passage of contrast material through a patient's arterial system. In order to accurately portray the blood flow in rapidly moving coronary arteries, a frame rate of 30 images per second is required. The level of detail desired in such images also mandates at least a 512.times.512 matrix size. Even higher matrix sizes, such as 1024.times.1024, are desirable for certain cerebral flow studies that are carried out at 4 to 8 frames per second. Both examples result in data volume that exceed conventional disk storage transfer rates. Thus, either the framing rate or the matrix size must suffer because of current limitations on the speed with which disk drives can transfer data. While the problem could be solved by increasing the number of disk drives utilized in a system, this is not a very practical solution because of the substantial additional expense that that introduces.